the spaceman that can't get high
by compartmental
Summary: The day Augustus Waters is born, his mother smiles and his father cries. Snippets from a life. / happy birthday, Ella!


**author's note: **hey, guys! this is my first fic in this fandom, and i haven't read the book since january 2012, so all canonical mistakes are mine and mine alone. happy (late) birthday, ella (arkanians)! p.s. thanks to Ky-lassassin for editing this. c: i don't own the fault in our stars and the title is from "la la lie" by jack's mannequin.

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The day Augustus Waters is born, his mother smiles and his father cries. The doctor cuts the umbilical cord, spanks his bottom, and, eventually, he is welcomed with the waiting warmth of his mother's arms.

This is the beginning of his story. Nothing particularly interesting happens for the first fifteen or so years of it, he'll admit—but this is his story, and it begins here.

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When he is three years old, his older cousin is in charge of babysitting him. The responsibilities of this job include setting Augustus in his playpen and watching a television program about working-class British citizens for three straight hours.

His cousin falls asleep staring at the screen, mouth hanging open and leg hanging off the footrest of the reclining chair. Augustus' feeble, three-year-old attempts to get his attention are fruitless.

His parents come in two hours later, laughing at some joke told moments prior to stepping through the door. The laughter dies on his mother's lips when she take in the scene: her nephew, snoring, drool running down his chin and her son slumped against the mesh siding of his playpen, half-asleep and having missed a meal and a snack.

His mother explodes, jerking his cousin out of the chair. The rest of the night is a blur of screaming and half-hearted, half-asleep apologies. Augustus sleeps in his parents' bed that night, nestled safely in between his mother and his father.

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Exactly twenty-four days before his fifth birthday, his mother asks him what he'd like as a birthday present. He thinks about it for a moment, considering the cool new play truck they had at school, how much he wants one for himself.

He runs through the opportunities in his head, flashy toys and shiny contraptions and everything that has ever been advertised. Finally, he says, _A puppy._

On the dawn of his birthday, he awakens to an overeager golden retriever puppy licking his face.

Life is good for Augustus Waters.

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He is never a sick child. _He's a fighter_, his father jokes to his friends. _Not even the germs can take him down. _It's good for when he gets to play during the winter while his friends are stuck in bed with a box of tissues and too-hot chicken noodle soup.

When he catches the flu for the first time at age seven, Augustus swears he's dying. His mother tries to reassure him he'll be fine,but it does nothing to qualm Augustus' suspicions that he won't make it until morning.

Some of his fondest childhood memories, weirdly, are of the days just after his fever's broken and he's emerged from his cave, the sunshine streaming directly onto his face as if to say _welcome__ back._

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The first time his heart is broken, he's eight years old. And a half. The girl's on his recreational soccer team and she always wears her hair in pigtails. Augustus always pulls on them, because that means she'll turn to look at him and he loves the color of her eyes.

Until he finds out she's been practicing with Jimmy, who lives two streets down. Augustus is a wreck, utterly heartbroken over the fact that Jimmy can apparently teach her things that Augustus cannot.

He cries in his pillow for exactly two hours and thirteen minutes before his mother announces that she'd made chocolate chip cookies.

Girls may be temporary, but cookies are forever.

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At the ripe age of eleven, Augustus Waters knows everything. He knows his multiplication table, he knows his home address and phone number, and he know his sisters—_two _of them, twice the trouble—are evil, rotten human beings.

It's a fact; Augustus has thoroughly tested it.

So, when the doctor tells his parents that his eldest sister's lab work is abnormal, he doesn't know what to think. On one hand, his sister is a pest. She's always messing with his stuff and hiding his favorite action figures—_dolls_, she calls them, the nerve—when his friends are over to play. On the other hand, however, she is his sister and he is supposed to love her. At least, that's what his parents had said, and he's still young enough to believe that they're always right.

It passes quietly: a mistake in the lab, a tiny slip-up that could have ruined a life forever.

The Waters family eats their dinner in silence that night, their presence saying all the words that cannot be said.

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By the age of thirteen, Augustus has most of his life figured out: school is a necessary evil, basketball is the best thing in the world, and girls are _hot, okay. _Augustus—dubbed "Gus" by his basketball team—can't believe he'd spent so much time believing the propaganda about the fairer sex having cooties, because ever since puberty hit him, he can't imagine them as anything other than wonderful creatures.

Augustus' routine is simple. He wakes up, he goes to school, he goes to basketball practice, and then he comes home. At home, he sits around the dinner table with his family, and then he thinks about girls.

He thinks about girls a lot.

He's thirteen, it's okay.

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When he's fifteen, he gets a bruise at basketball practice. He doesn't pay much attention to it, because he's a boy; he gets a lot of bruises.

After three weeks, though, his mother points out that the bruise is still there, that it's not healing. Augustus shrugs it off, because he probably just hit it again or something.

A week later, when the bruise is still there, his mom makes him an appointment. When the lab results come back, his father cries, but his mother doesn't smile this time.

He stares at the paper numbly. Osteosarcoma, mainly in his right leg. Schedule an appointment to discuss treatment, followed by the doctor's assistant's number.

He feels numb, at first. He wants to cry. He wants this to be happening to anyone else besides him.

But, mostly, he's not going to take this lying down. He's going to fight. He was named after the first emperor of one of the largest empires in history and the strongest force on earth. Weakness is not in his name. It is not in his bones. He's going to fight this cancer, and he's going to win.

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When his leg is amputated and his treatment is done, he goes home to quiet fanfare. He won his battle; his body has conquered its opponent. It's time to rest.

It's time to move on.

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He's seventeen when he goes back to his support group. He follows Isaac into the elevator down to the Literal Heart of Jesus. He takes a seat on one of the chairs, across the circle from his old seat, and that's when he sees her.


End file.
